"Hold it!" Luke said, his hand suddenly close to his lightsaber. Whatever that was at the door might provide a way to stall. He reached out with his Force power and found that he could not sense a living mind there. A droid then, of some sort.
Whatever. It didn't matter. It might be nothing more than the grocer's droid demanding that Karia pay her bill, but Luke didn't care.
It bought him time, and he was going to use it. "The ceremony stops!" he said. "I don't know who or what that is at the door, but the ceremony stops until we find out. Neither of you move." Karia seemed about to protest, but Luke could see her eyes move toward his lightsaber. She nodded agreement andkept silent. Lando nodded as well. "Go," he said.
Luke turned around and hurried toward the door. He unclipped his lightsaber, just to be on the safe side. He threw back the bolt and pulled the door open-and was astonished to find Threepio rushing into the house.
"Threepio! What in space are you"Stop! Stop! Stop!" Threepio cried out as he burst into the room. He stepped inside, paused a moment as he looked around, and then spotted Lando and Karia under the canopy.
He hurried toward them, gesticulating frantically. Luke followed behind the droid, utterly baffled.
"Go no further, Captain Calrissian!" Threepio shouted.
"Stop! Stop!"
"What are you talking about?" Lando said. "Threepio, this is no time for you to barge in. When you made that racket at the door, I thought you were going to be someone important. Now get out of here."
"But you must stop, I tell you!" Threepio turned toward Luke. "Master Luke, please tell me. Have they gotten to the ceremony of the blood kiss yet?"
"No. They were just about to do it"' Luke said.
"Then thank heavens I am in time. You must stop, Captain Calrissian. The woman is a life-witch!"
"She's a what?" Lando asked.
"A life-witch!" Threepio said, pointed at Karia. "The honorific `Ver' before her last name signifies that she is a life-witch."
"That is a term that I do not like to hear," said Karia.
"We call ourselves life-bearers, for that is truly what we do." She looked at Lando. "But did you not know? Were you not aware? How could you seek me out and not know?"
"What's a life-witch?" Lando asked. "And are you one?"
"I am a life-bearer," Karia said.
"Call it by whatever name you wish," said the droid, in tones that were even more frantic than usual. "But it is true. True! We checked the records before we came over here, Artoo and I. He'd be in here showing them to you, but he's having trouble getting up the steps." Threepio turned toward Karia. "Go ahead," he said. "Tell them.
We have the records. Tell them how many times you have been married."
"It is my gift, the gift of the life-bearers," Karia said, ignoring Threepio and addressing Lando with an unnerving calm. "We are found only here, on this world, born now and again by random chance. Even here we are rare. Ours is a special gift and skill. By linking close, we can keep the old, the sick, the dying, alive for a time. The blood kiss bonds my body chemistry to my husband's. I can link to his life essence, and so sustain him. The sick and the dying are relieved of pain, and can live, for a time, in vigor and health. That is the Support I spoke of. But we cannot provide Support forever. We can hold back pain, and forestall death, but only for a time. Then we must withdraw Support, or die ourselves. And a life force that has come to rely on Support cannot long survive on its own. It dies.
"You mean after five years of Supporting me-"
"I would withdraw Support and you would die," Karia said. "I thought that you knew this." She shrugged. "You would not be the first young and healthy man to exchange a long and uncertain life for a short one of comfort and security. And no, before you can ask, no, I could not marry without providing Support. We must have a time of recovery between husbands, but our life forces are likewise shaped by what we do. A life-bearer who does not provide Support for a time will soon sicken and die." Lando opened his mouth and shut it again.
"Your friend Chantu Solk was a more typical case. When he came to me, he had but a few months to live, months of pain and failing health.
I gave him three years of health and comfort and companionship, and in return I became his their, taking on his wealth only when he had no further use for it. Does that not seem a fair exchange?"
Lando looked back and forth from Karia to Threepio and back to Karia before he found his voice again and managed to gasp out a single, strangled question. "How many husband?" he asked.
She drew herself up to her full height, folded her arms, and spoke with a calm, low dignity. "I shall conceal nothing" she said. "The life-bearer can bear no children of her own. We are sterile. But our compensation is long life, and time enough to do our work. I have had the honor to survive forty-nine husbands thus far."
Forty-nine husbands?" Lando repeated in horrified astonishment.
Luke looked at Karia, amared. How old was this woman?
Was she a woman, a human, at all?
Karia Ver Seryan turned to Lando and smiled. "But all this I thought you knew. In my eyes, and heart, nothing has changed. I shall have you if you shall have me. All that remains is the kiss of joining, the touch of my blood mingled with yours. Yes, there have been forty-nine. But should you still wish to undergo the ceremony, and the marriage, it shall be your happy death" five years from today, that will bring it to an even fifty.
CHAPTER TEN Sho wtime Something was happening to Star Number TD- 10036EM-I 271, something that went against all experience, all patterns of stellar mechanics. Strange forces reached out for it, huge and unseen hands manipulated its interior, forcing the internal heat and pressure up to levels that such a star never experienced.
The surface of TD- 10036-EM- 1271 began to roil more and more violently. Powerful seismic waves started to pulse through the supercompressed matter at the star's core. Its outer layers began to expand as a result of the increased heat and pressure. It changed in color from yellow to white to blue white to pulsating blue white glaring up into the ultravioletAnd then, quite impossibly, TD- 10036-EM- 1271 exploded.
The shock-wave shell of energy rushed out into space in all directions, an incredible blast of light and heat that would be plainly visible to the naked eye from a half-dozen inha ited systemsnce the light from the explosion reached those stars, years or decades later.
But the event did not go unobserved. By something more than chance, an automated probe droid was on hand to witness the explosion. It carefully recorded every detail of the supernova, noting the time, the place, and making a scan of the background stars to confirm the coordinates.
Then it powered down its detection systems and switched on its navicomputer. It headed out of the Th-lOO3EM1271 system, out toward where it could safely drop into hyperspace. It dropped out of normal space, and rushed into the dark between the stars. It had an appointment to keep.
An appointment on Corellia * * * Han Solo had gone to sleep happy indeed. After tucking the children in, he had gone to be by himself and shut his own eyes, thinking nostalgic thoughts about his old homeworld. He had felt full of love and pride in his children, felt glad that everyone was safe and secure aboard the good old Millennium Falcon.
But all that good feeling vanished as he slept. Han was tormented by dreams that night, fearsome dreams of all the most nightmarish moments of his old adventures, the monsters that had tried to kill him or eat him, the crash landing he should not have survived, the deadly traps he had been caught in and, by all rights, should not have escaped. Han was not the sort of person who had nightmares very often, but when he did have them, they struck hard, and deeand the dangers he had faced in real life were ample fodder for a lifetime of bad dreams.
But the real dangers he had faced in the past paled in comparison with the imaginary terror Han faced in his dreams that night. Again and again, he found himself trapped in the same few horrifying moments.
A something, a faceless, secret, hidden, de
adly something was stalking Han and his family, tracking them across a lurid, distorted jungle landscape full of the shrieks and cries of the hunter and the hunted, the air pungent with the stench of dead things putrefying in the steambath heat. But even as the heat and the stench and the sound hit Han smack in the face, he would find himself suddenly running, running for his life, his family just ahead of him, Chewie just behind.
The children were screaming in terror as they fled, and Leia was in the lead, slashing a path through the vegetation with her lightsaber.
Han knew he shouldn't waste time or energy trying to seethe something, but he could not help himself. He turned, looked back over his shoulder, and tripped over a vine in the path. He went sprawling, and landed faceup, looking straight up atHis eyes snapped open, and Han realized that he was awake, safe in his bed, on his ship, with Leia by his side and all safe, all well. He sat up and swung his feet out of bed and sat there for a moment, trying to steady himself.
He realized that he was covered in a cold sweat. He took a deep breath and forced himself to relax.
He got up, moving carefully in the darkness of the tiny cabin, and made his way out to the passageway, out to the refresher stall. He turned on the light, squinted in the sudden brightness, ran some water, and splashed it on his face.
Why had the dream frightened him so much?
It didn't take much reflection for him to come up with an answer. His family. The dream was not about Han being in danger, but about his family being in danger.
Here he was, about to bring his wife and children to Corellia, where New Republic Intelligence thought there was enough danger that their agents disappeared, but not so much that it would be any problem to have Han and his family serve as decoys. Corellia, where even in the good times, pirates had been part of everyday life. What in the universe had he been thinking of, bringing Leia and the kids to such a place?
"Ah, give it up," Han said to the face in the nrirror.
Leia would have gone anyway, to attend the trade summit, and Han knew full well just how determined she was to keep her family with her.
There had been too many separations over the years for Leia-or Han-to put up with yet another. Even Chewbacca would have insisted on goingespecially if he felt the kids were in any danger.
In short, thele really hadn't been anything he could have done to stop them all from going. Not without convincing everyone that the danger was a lot greter than it seemed to be.
And yet. And yet. That NRI agent had known more than she was tellingr perhaps telling more than she knew.
Something wasn't right. Han was certain of that.
He checked the time and sighed. He was supposed to be getting up in an hour anyway. No real sense in going back to sleep. Might as well head up to the cockpit and start getting ready for their arrival in the Corellian System, a few hours from now.
He headed back to the cabin, and dressed as quietly as he could. Leaa muttered in her sleep and rolled over, but did not awaken. Good. Han stepped back into the corridor and made his way forward to the cockpit.
He was not particularly surprised to see Chewbacca there already, in the copilot's chair, doing systems checkouts.
"Hey, Chewie," Han said, slapping his old friend on the shoulder. "You couldn't sleep either, huh?"
Chewie let out a low growl and got on with his work.
Han sat down in the pilot's chair. He flicked on a few of the control systems, glanced at a readout or two, but then he dropped his hands away from the control panels, leaned back in his chair, folded one leg over the other, and proceeded to get lost in thought.
His knowledge of Corellian politics was at least twenty years out of date, but it might be enough to make some educated guesses. Who was stirring up the trouble? Humans? The Drall? The Selonians? And of course it could not be laid out that simply. All three of the races had their own factions, and the three races were, after all, on all five planets, making for a dizzying number of potential alliances and enemies for any given faction. And who could tell what groups had faded away or sprung to life in that time?
But Han realized that he didn't need to worry about any of that. He knew better. The Drall were too careful, too sensible, to start trouble they could not finish, and the Selonians ~iould see it all as beneath their notice, to say nothing of unrefined, to go knocking off NRI agents. Besides, the NRI had a well Ieserved reputation for keeping hands off any group that might have been oppressed under the Empire.
The NRI wouldn't have gone nosing around in Drallish or Selonian matters in the first place. Even if they had wanted to give it a try, they would have found it all but impossible to infiltrate native agents. It was not much of an exaggeration to say the number of Drall or Selonians outside Corellian space could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Even if the NRI had found a few, what were the odds of their finding one ready to play spy for them against their own kind?
No, the NRI couldn't go up against the Drall or Selonians very well, and it probably wouldn't if it could, and the Drall and Selonians were not likely to give the NRI a reason to try. Which, of course, left humans. And, if there were various external reasons that made it unlikely for the nonhuman species to be the source of the trouble, then there were lots of external reasons why it made a great deal of sense for humans to be the most likely suspects.
For starters, the Empire had been notoriously prohuman.
It had treated the members of nearly all other species as second-class citizens, at best. Han glanced over to where Chewbacca was working. Some species, like Wookiees, were made slaves. Few nonhumans would have much reason to grieve at the Empire's demise, but there were plenty of humans for whom the Imperial era had been the best of times. There were no doubt quite a few humans in the Corellian Sector who mourned the Empire's passing, and had little reason to love the New Republic.
But the sheer fact that the NRI was involved made it likely that the opposition was human. The NRI had lots of human agents. That made it possible for the NRI to infiltrate a human opposition-and vice versa.
Han sat upright. Wait a second. That was the part that had been bothering him. Kalenda had told him that the opposition had managed to capture or kill at least six NRI agents. No one was that good. Not unless they had help.
In short, it was all but certain that the bad guys had infiltrated NRI. Han checked his instruments. They had another hour and a half before the drop out of light speed.
All right then, they would just have to make the best use of that time. "Chewie," Han said, "I'm a little worried about this one."
Chewie answered with a complicated hoot and a display of his fangs.
"I know," Han said. "I've been thinking about what Kalenda said myself. It's possible that they're waiting for us with something besides a marching band."
Chewie made an interrogatory sort of noise and gestured toward the navicomputer.
"No, that'd be worse," Han said. "What with the pirates and all, the Corellians have always been very particular about people coming out of hyperspace in just the right place and just the right time. If we shifted our arrival coordinates, they'd blow us out of the sky first and ask questions later.
We'll just have to come in at the designated time and coordinates and be ready for any surprises they might have waiting for us. I want you to check all the systems and then doublecheck the weapons and defense systems. Even if you find a failure in a minor system, don't fix it until you know we can fight if we have to. I'd rather have the plumbing go out than find out the hard way that the turbo-lasers aren't working. I'll be back soon to give you a hand, but first I'm going to go aft and get everyone ready."
Chewie shook his head mournfully and gave a sort of openmouthed snort.
"Hey, relax, will you? I'm just going to have a quiet word with Leia. I'm not going to act nervous and scare the kids, all right?"
Chewbacca hooted quietly, clearly unconvinced.
Han climbed up out of the low seat and went back to the rear of th
e Falcon, to find that the kids were already up and, needless to say, had gotten their mother up as well.
They were all bustling about the lounge area, getting breakfast together. "How is everyone this morning?" Han asked.
"Hi, Dad! Fine," Jacen said as he opened up a meal pack. "We gonna get to Corellia today?"
"We sure are," Han said, smiling as cheerfully as he could. "But we have to jump back out of light speed first, in about an hour and a half."
"Wow!" Jacen said. "That must be neat to see. Can we ride up in the cockpit and watch?"
"Not this time, sport." if things got dicey once they were in-system, the last thing Han would need would be frightened children in the backseat. "Maybe some other time. Right now I want you three kids to get everything stowed, do what your mother says, and be strapped in for the jump out of hyperspace-or we turn around and go back home. Got it?"
Star Wars - Ambush At Corellia Page 16